Words
by sweetly-cruel
Summary: A continuation of the scene in OotP where Harry loses it with R 'n' H. What happens between the pair afterwards? A quick dash of Ron/Hermione fluff. Please read and review!!!


Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, or the text in italics.

AN: I was flicking through OotP and decided to write a rather pointless fic about the scene where Harry loses his temper with Ron and Hermione. What happened between the duo afterwards? You probably don't care, but you clicked on it, so you might as well read it… : )

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"I did think he'd be a bit better this year," said Hermione in a disappointed voice. "I mean… you know…" she looked around carefully; there were half a dozen empty seats on either side of them and nobody was passing the table "…now he's in the Order and everything."

"Poisonous toadstools don't change their spots," said Ron sagely. "Anyway, I've always thought Dumbledore was cracked to trust Snape. Where's the evidence he's ever really stopped working for You-Know-Who?"

"I think Dumbledore's got plenty of evidence, even if he doesn't share it with you, Ron," snapped Hermione.

"Oh, shut up, the pair of you," said Harry heavily, as Ron opened his mouth to argue back. Hermione and Ron both froze, looking angry and offended. "Can't you give it a rest?" said Harry. "You're always having a go at each other, it's driving me mad." And abandoning his shepherd's pie, he swung his schoolbag over his shoulder and left them sitting there.

Ron turned his head in mingled horror and bewilderment to face Hermione. She looked positively stricken. In fact, he mused, she couldn't have looked more like she'd been punched in the face even if there's been blood tricking from her nose.

He couldn't blame her. He felt pretty unsettled himself. Snapping at his best friends, telling them to shut up… For some people, some gangly, red-haired and some bookish, bushy-haired people, this was standard. But it just wasn't the sort of thing that _Harry_ would do or say. Harry was the even-tempered one. The middle ground. The eye in the storm.

If he suddenly became as irritable as Ron and Hermione, then the three of them would be dead within a week.

"Oh, _Ron_," wailed Hermione suddenly, "why is he _acting_ like this? It's so _frustrating_."

Ron knew perfectly well why Harry was acting like this, but he couldn't be bothered embroiling himself in a weighty conversation with Hermione about it. Weighty conversations with Hermione were something that he liked to avoid at all costs.

"He's in a bad mood about Snape," he reasoned, "he'll come round."

"Of course it's not about _Snape_, Ron," countered Hermione wearily. "We both _know_ why he's upset."

"If you know, then why did you ask me?"

"It was a rhetorical question," she explained impatiently.

"A what?"

Hermione ignored him, sighing that exasperated sigh that she used so often when around him. God, he hated it when she did that. Know-It-All Hermione Granger, being forced to hang around with people who didn't know what 'rhetorical' meant! His heart bled for her.

He was in the process of developing a decent comeback when she groaned, "Am I being stupid to get upset? Am I expecting too much of him?"

Ron blinked, slightly amazed. He doubted that he, or anyone, for that matter, had ever heard Hermione accuse herself of stupidity or of having unrealistic expectations. It unnerved him to the extent that the only reply that he could come up with was, "Er… how do you mean?"

"Well, Harry's been through a lot. A _lot_. Especially in the last few months. Seeing Cedric dying – I think he blames himself, you know…" She cast her eyes dismally to her shepherd's pie, though it was clear that she now had no intentions of finishing it. "And he was stuck at his aunt and uncle's all summer, he didn't know what was going on, had to listen to the news every night for scraps of information, and… well, we didn't really _help_ the situation, did we?"

"How do you mean?" Ron found himself parroting, although this time his tone was much shriller.

"We could have told him a bit more. You know, about the Order."

"Oh, for crying out loud, Hermione, we did all we could!" Ron was fed up of hearing about how he'd _betrayed_ Harry, how he'd _let him down_, how he'd been a _rotten_ friend….Harry had given him a hard enough time about it, and now Hermione was participating. "What were we supposed to do, send him an owl saying, 'Hi, Harry, just thought you'd like to know about the secret society that's been formed to get rid of You-Know-Who. But don't tell a soul, or we'll all be brutally slaughtered by Dark wizards!' Imagine if it had got into the wrong hands! And anyway, we weren't allowed in on the meetings, how could –"

"All right, all right, calm down, Ron," Hermione cut him off in annoyance. Her yellow-gold eyes were flaring slightly, a sure sign that her temper was about to follow suit. "You don't need to be so defensive."

"I wasn't being defensive," he mumbled defensively.

"You overreacted completely," she added, visibly unable to help herself. "Listen, I think we should just… be a bit more patient. A bit more understanding."

That was when Ron made his fatal mistake. He hesitated.

Ron could have kicked himself. He knew that you should never, _ever_, under any circumstances, life-threatening or not, hesitate when embroiled in a discussion with Hermione Granger. It just_ wasn't a good idea_. He'd merely been pondering whether or not he should agree with her for the sake of a quiet life; after all, it wouldn't hurt to let her win a small battle very now and then. It wasn't her fault that she wasn't as quick-witted and skilled in debate as he was. However, she'd taken his brief pause as an opportunity to indulge in some major histrionics.

"Oh, _please_, Ron," she implored melodramatically, raising her voice and overemphasising EVERY OTHER BLOODY WORD. "_Please_, just _think_ about what I'm saying, will you? I know it's hard for you to understand, but you've got to trust –"

Ron's indignation resurfaced, even louder and more gauche than before. "What do you mean, it's hard for me to understand?" he demanded. "I understand every bit as well as you do, how Harry's feeling. I'm not stupid, for all that you seem to think I am. Just because I don't finish my homework two weeks in advance doesn't mean that I'm thick enough to work out what's going on in my best mate's mind. You think you're so clever, Hermione, but you're just bloody patronising!"

Most people would be rather flustered by such an outburst, but it seemed that Hermione had grown accustomed to Ron's sporadic temper tantrums a long time ago. Unfazed, she intoned casually, "You sound like a four-year-old, by the way."

"I know," he admitted dully. "It's just… ugh. I don't like this, Hermione. I don't like this whole 'You-Know-Who-may-turn-up-at-any-moment-and-eat-our-brains' thing. It's driving me mental."

"But this isn't about you," she replied in a calmly frank tone. He was surprised – he'd expected some degree of raw sympathy from her. "It's about Harry. We're trying to talk about Harry – our best friend, Harry – and you're making it about _you_. You're taking everything I say and turning it into a slight on you."

Damn Hermione, he thought sullenly. Damn her. How the _hell_ did she understand all of his faults so completely? For the same reason that he understood hers, probably.

"You do that a lot, too," he replied sulkily.

"Excuse me?"

"Make the conversation about you."

"Fine, then," she shrugged, speaking rationally, "then we both do it. Why has it always got to be about me? Why has it always got to be about you? Why has it always got to be about _us_?"

They sat in an awkward, yet oddly comfortable silence for a moment. Ron found it incredible, the number of words – eloquent, illustrative words – that could be shared between two people when they both had the common sense to keep their mouths shut.

"Because we're both equally self-obsessed?" he suggested, grinning audaciously.

Hermione smiled back. He could tell that she was trying to conceal her amusement, to weigh down the corners of her mouth, but resistance was futile. "Quite," she agreed. "Horribly self-obsessed. So – let's try and pull ourselves together, shall we? For Harry's sake?"

"For Harry's sake." He realised that his rather lamely humorous assessment of his and Hermione's attitude wasn't funny anymore, and that they should really have stopped smiling at each other a long time ago.

This was ridiculous, he concluded, why in the name of Lockhart's hair gel were they still grinning like idiots? Because he _was_ an idiot, that's why. He was an idiot, because he was staring at Hermione and deciding that her lips formed a rather attractive heart shape when she smiled. And only an idiot would think in such a way about his best friend.

Hermione's eyes widened as she started to look uncomfortable. "Er, listen, I need to finish my Potions essay, I'll see you later –"

"Oh, yeah, see you –"

"Talk to Harry –"

"I will."

"Well, bye."

"Bye."

"Bye."

"Er, bye."

As she walked out of the hall, struggling under the weight of her schoolbag, Ron stared after her receding figure. And that was when he realised something horrifying. He had never watched Hermione leave the hall before. He had never gazed soppily after her, eager to savour every last sight of her. This wasn't a good sign.

If he was starting to have feelings for Hermione, then his life was over. Ron always behaved bashfully around girls he fancied; he stuttered and stammered and his face turned as red as his hair. If he began to flush scarlet every time he saw his best friend, then he might as well kill himself now.

He felt nothing for Hermione. He couldn't feel anything for Hermione. No way. No way. No. Way.

Argh.

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You know what would make me really, really happy? If you were to review. You don't want to see me beg, do you? : )


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